


Less than the sum of his parts, or four scenes from life after the journey's end

by halfeatenmoon



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-17
Updated: 2010-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-06 09:05:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfeatenmoon/pseuds/halfeatenmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four scenes about how the new Doctor surprised Rose, how some things were worse than expected and how they learned to deal with it anyway.  (Sort of dark in that it shows an unhappy relationship, but it doesn't end on a low note.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Less than the sum of his parts, or four scenes from life after the journey's end

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic that was very much written for myself. It's the sort of fic that just is what it is; I'm not really interested in talking about interpretations, or how it could be better. I started it some time after I first saw Journey's End, and I suppose I've only finished it now because that's how long it took to get my head around it. So, this is my personal fix-it. Maybe it will be of interest to you.

1.

Rose Tyler woke up alone, as she did every day.  _He_ was always up, dressed and eating breakfast before she had even woken up.  Dressed, eating, and complaining about how slow she was.  He always seemed to be complaining, these days.  There were so many frustrations to being a human, whether it was traffic on the highways, or a favourite food he couldn’t get on Earth, or the ignorant things written in the newspapers and the more ignorant people who believed them.

Or Rose.

As she pulled on her clothes this morning, though, she could hear his voice filtering through.  Not just trying to argue with the radio newsreaders as he often did.  Talking to someone else.  Maybe today would be a good day, if he had something to distract him from his usual morning tirade on the disappointments of being human, and being with Rose.

“Oh, so you’re finally awake, are you?  So nice of ‘er majesty to join the rest of us mortals at the breakfast table.”

Maybe not.

“There’s only you there, Dan.”

“That’s _Doctor_ when we’re at home, and it’s not just me, I’m talking to Jackie.”

“Why are you on the phone to my _mum_?”

“She wants to know what’s going on at Torchwood, of course!”

“Why don’t she and Dad come back to work with the rest of us, then?”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Rosie, it’s hardly meant for them!  They just like to know how people are, that’s all!”

The old Doctor never would have called her ‘Rosie’ and she wasn’t sure she liked this one calling her that.

“It’s gossip, Doctor.  I don’t think Owen would much care for you telling my mum about his private life, and as a matter of fact, I don’t think he’d much care for you spying on him, either!”

“Well, why don’t you just take your high horse into the kitchen and get your own breakfast then!  _I’m_ trying to have a conversation.”

“And Heaven forbid I should interrupt your gossip session,” Rose muttered as she sat down and picked up an orange.  “The world might end if we were civil to each other.  We might even have a conversation.”

He didn’t hear her.  He’d forgotten her already.

 

 

2.

Sometimes Rose thought it might be better if she’d never tried to go back to the old Earth.  If she hadn’t, she would have spent the rest of her life wondering what would have happened if she did.  At first it seemed wonderful to have the Doctor, or at least a version of him.  But after a few months of living, working and sleeping with this Doctor, Rose sometimes felt herself wondering whether, given the choice, she would rather put things back the way they were before.

It had taken a while for her to notice the differences.  He seemed the same, at first.  His hands felt the same in hers, he had the same gorgeous hair as always, the same smile, the curve to his neck, the long fingers, all those things she used to think of in the quiet moments, during the long years that they’d been apart.

It should have been a clue, the first time they kissed.  The real Doctor had never kissed her, at least not in that body, but she knew that he never would have kissed her like _that_.

He had the same memories, too, at least for most things.  But they were fuzzy, distant, and overlaid with memories of a temp from Cheswick and a long, strange period involving Jack Harkness, the Rift and a jar.  He was still angry, murdering, vengeful monster she had seen fighting the Daleks, and he was still the genius that was the Doctor.  But he was also something completely different, something Rose hadn’t seen before, or at least only glimpsed in passing.  He was rough, now, rough and uncouth.  He was snappish in a way, quick and biting in his humour, a way that he hadn’t been before.  Of course, the Doctor had always had a tendency for sarcasm, and for silliness.  But there was something different about this.  His jokes were faster, they were constant, and they were more sly and biting than she’d heard since the first time he insulted Mickey.  They also nearly always related to his newfound need for gossip.

All in all, the Doctor’s sense of humour was suddenly kind of bitchy.

“Stop it,” she hissed at him one day when they were eating lunch in the hub.

“Stop what?”

“Talking like that.”

“Like what?  I just thought you should know that I reckon Tosh and that alien we’ve got in the cell downstairs…”

“We don’t _know_ she’s an alien.”

“Why don’t you ever trust me on this stuff?”

Rose sighed and threw her arms in the air.  “You know what, _John Smith_?  I really don’t care what you think Tosh did with the alien in the basement, alright?”

“Well, _good for you_, then, sticking up for Tosh.  Aren’t you a doll?”  He sort of jerked his neck and swerved his head to emphasise his words.  “Pretty painted face and a stick up your arse.”

She felt her face redden and tried not to show how angry she was as she stood up to clear the remains of their lunch away.  “And stop doing that thing with your head!  God, it’s like you’re a woman.”

If she had her way, she’d rather just keep him out of Torchwood entirely.  After being Earth’s ultimate alien authority for most of his life, it drove him absolutely mad that he wasn’t recognised that way any more, and his rage at that fact drove Rose absolutely mad herself.  She was constantly terrified that one day in the middle of an operation he was going to decide that he knew better, break ranks and muck everything up.  But there were two advantages to having him at Torchwood: firstly, if he started making trouble she’d find out right away, and secondly, he was at least marginally calmer at Torchwood than he was anywhere else.  It was something to do with the familiarity of it, he would say, before he launched off into a bizarre, nostalgic and completely incoherent story about Jack Harkness and being stuck in a jar.  She wouldn’t put anything past Jack, but she didn’t particularly want to know about it and it didn’t make any sense anyway.

The end of their working day was the time for Rose to be impatient, waiting for the Doctor to finish what he was doing.  He never seemed to want to leave.

“I’m hungry.”

“We could get pizza,” he said, without looking up from the computer screen he was poring over.

“I’m sick of pizza.  Everyone else has gone home.”

“Jake is still here.”  He glared in the direction of the archives, where Jake was studying the latest strange object that had washed up from the Rift.  Jake didn’t let the Doctor touch mysterious artefacts any more.

“Jake lives here.  It’s his job.”

“It’s my job to do this.”

“And your job will still be here in the morning.  Come on, I want to get to bed some time tonight.”  She slid her arms around his shoulders to breathe on his neck.  Despite how frustrating he was, sometimes she couldn’t help wanting to touch him.  “Don’t you want to come with me?”

He stood up and pulled away from her a little too quickly, as though he were angry.  Almost as though he were disgusted.

“Fine then.  Let’s go.”

 

3.

The shower was still broken.

The Doctor hadn’t relaxed until they finally walked through the door.  He practically ignored her until they were back in the apartment, dragging their feet on the floor.  She peeled off her coat in silence, frustrated, not even looking at him, but she could feel his eyes on her the moment he looked up.

“Rose…”

She felt his arm at her waist, gentle now.  Then his other hand was at her face, long, cool fingers gently turning her chin to meet his eyes.  It was a look that she had only ever seen on his face, and not the _real_ Doctor’s: longing, and hungry.  Confused.

It was all she could do to keep from shivering as she felt his breath on her lips.

“I need to shower,” she said, roughly, pulling away from him and shutting herself in the bathroom without a backwards glance.

The shower had been broken when they got the apartment three months ago.  Sometimes it was too hot, sometimes it was too cold.  There was usually just a dribble of water.  Tonight the showerhead was stubbornly spraying water at the wall rather than at Rose.  Normally she would be complaining about it, but tonight she was truly grateful for an excuse to delay.

Mickey would have fixed it.  The Doctor – John Smith – Dan Noble – _whoever_ he was started out by just avoiding it, then being embarrassed that he couldn’t fix it and covering up by talking about how pathetically backwards human engineering was, to snapping at Rose wondering why she expected a man to do everything for her, to breezily declaring every few days that he’d get a man in one of these days.  But he never did call the plumber.

She missed Mickey.

“You took your time,” he said, softly, when she finally emerged, his hands reaching for her body again, urgent and desperate at the same time.

“Did you want something?” she asked, coldly.

He pursed his lips.  He didn’t like apologising.  Funny, how she suddenly remembered how often the Doctor used to say ‘sorry’. This one didn’t like to apologise for anything.  “I’m… I’m still adjusting, okay?”

“Well that’s funny, because you don’t seem to have changed since I first met you.”

He dropped his hands, and stepped back from her.  “Who do you want me to change into?”

_The Doctor_.

She didn’t say it out loud, but she didn’t need to.

“I don’t think we should do this any more.”

“What do you mean?”  He didn’t just look confused, now.  He looked frightened.

“This.  Us.  Living with you… I don’t know, I just need some time alone, things just haven’t felt right ever since…”

“Ever since I came here.”  His eyes widened, then narrowed again.  “I thought this was what you wanted.  You wanted _me_.”

Rose couldn’t look at him.  He grabbed her by the shoulders.

“I’m here, aren’t I?  You got me.  You got what you want.”

“I didn’t want_ you_.”

There was a long silence.  It was dark now.  He pressed his face closer to hers and she shiveredat the hot breath on her face.  For a brief instant, she _did_ want him.  There were a lot of those moments, because he still looked like the Doctor.  It was the same face that made her melt, the hands that she wanted to touch her, the voice that made her shiver, the throat she wanted to lick.  But outside of those brief moments of sheer desire, this Doctor was a maddening, scary stranger.

“I wanted the Doctor.  You look like him, but you’re not.”

“I remember what he remembers.”

“But you don’t act the same.  You don’t feel the things he does, do you?”

“No,” he said, impatiently, forcing her shoulders against the wall.  “Because unlike the Doctor, I actually _want_ you.”

He tried to kiss her then, but Rose slapped him as hard as she could and he stumbled backwards until he hit the bed and sat down on it heavily.  Rose realised she was trembling; she didn’t know whether it was anger or shock.  The Doctor… Smith… whoever he was, she didn’t know any more… he slowly put a hand to his cheek and then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.  Tension seemed to arc between them like lightning, and when he finally looked up at her, with the slightest of wry smiles on his face, Rose felt an entirely unexpected thrill or excitement somewhere around her stomach.  He was amazing.

But this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

“How can you say that?” she asked, in a low, barely restrained voice.  “He _loved_ me.  You know he did.”

“But that’s not the same thing, is it?” he asked.  “The Doctor loves a lot of people.  I know he does, I have a memory full of them.  You even know some of them.  He loves Martha and Donna and Jack and Sarah Jane Smith, too, do you know that?”  He screwed up his face.  “I think he even loves Mickey a little bit.”

Rose looked at him impassively, with her lips pressed tightly together.  _He loved me more_, she told herself, but she wasn’t so sure that it was true.  She never had been sure, she just tried not to think about it.

“I know he loved you, Rose, I have him in my bloody head all the time talking about love,” he said, with an edge of bitterness, “But I know what goes on in his head far better than you ever will.  I know that he loves you, but he doesn’t _want_ you, or anyone else.  Do you know why he chose Donna?  Because she didn’t want him, either.”

He pushed himself off the bed and took the step-and-a-half to where Rose was standing.  He touched her face again, and she flinched, still afraid, but he was gentle this time.  His fingers were moved tenderly along her jawbone and she felt the anger ebbing away, just leaving her with the now-familiar confusion of sorrow and lust.

“That’s how you can tell that I’m not really him, Rose,” he said, softly.  “Because he would never in a million years do the things with you that I do.”

He kissed her again, and this time she gave in.  She still felt more confused than she ever had before in her life.  Even the first time she saw inside the TARDIS didn’t compare.  She hated him, she really _loathed_ him, but she still felt disappointed when he pulled away.

“So, okay, I’m not the Doctor,” he said, with a note of desperation in his voice.  “I look like him, and I have his memories.  And I have Donna Noble’s.  And I remember spending three years living in a jar.  But they’re like other people who just live in my head.  They’re not _me_.”

“I don’t know who you are.”  Rose said, stonily.

“I know who you are, but I don’t know who I am either.”  He sighed.  “You can’t expect me to be the Doctor.  I’m not.  But you could just try sticking around and getting to know me.  For who _I_ am, myself, and not for how much I’m _not_ like the Doctor.”

“You’re not him, you’re right, you’re not who I thought you were.  This isn’t how it was all supposed to go.”  She stared at him for a long, chilly moment.  “So why don’t I just leave?”

“Please don’t!” he said, with real desperation in his voice now.  “Please, can’t you just try?”

“And why should I?”

She tried to move away and he grabbed her wrist, and suddenly there was that spark again, that crackle of electricity that the real Doctor had never made her feel.

“Because the only thing I know about myself, the only thing I know is really me, and not the Doctor or Donna or a hand in a jar, is that _I want you_.”

 

 

4.

“Human bodies are _disgusting_,” the Doctor said, shakily, as they lay together afterwards in the dark.

“If you don’t like the mess you should hurry up and get that shower fixed.”

“I mean it, though.  I don’t understand how humans can proliferate so quickly when the process is so gross_._”

“Because it’s fun,” Rose replied, sleepily.  “Why are you so grossed out _now_, anyway?  It’s hardly the first time you’ve done it.  And you’ve got all Donna’s memories from before you were…”

She stopped suddenly.

“You just realised?  Yes, Rose, everything I learned about human copulation, I learned from Donna Noble.”

“Oh.  Well.  That explains a lot.”

“Didn’t you ever wonder how I knew how it worked when I’d never been a human before?”

“I sort of assumed that Time Lords were the same.  I meant, that explains why you’re so good at it.”

“Oh… er… thanks, I guess.  I suppose being good at anything is worth being proud of.  Even if it’s…”

“Disgusting, I know.  Why do you keep doing it if it’s so disgusting to you?”

He sighed.  “Because I can’t stop _wanting_ to.  When I first realised that I’d become part human, I was absolutely _repulsed_.  And it wasn’t so much because human bodies are repulsive, it’s that I suddenly realised I had a human libido.  Ugh, it’s _horrible_.  I don’t know how humans ever get anything _done_ with such an insistent sex drive.  It’s so invasive!  I can’t seem to think about _anything _any more without thoughts about sex barging in, or at least hanging around in the background.”

“That probably answers your earlier question, then.”

“What?”

“You know, why humans have sex so much when it’s so gross.”

“Oh, right.  Constant libido.”  He sighed.  “And there’s nothing I can do about it, is there?  I’m so used to there being options.  Usually I can go somewhere, or change something, and… and _fix things_.  But there’s nothing to do about this except try to get used to it.”

“Best way to get used to something is usually to keep doing it.”

Rose felt him flinch, and she laughed.  “I don’t just mean sex, and I don’t mean right now.  Though you could do it again right now – or you could never do it again.  It’s up to you.  Those are options you_ can_ choose from.”

He was silent for a long time, so much so that Rose had started drifting off to sleep.

“I’ll get used to it,” he murmured, at last.  “I’ll try, anyway.”


End file.
